Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who led the counter-culture movement in the US using his City Lights bookshop, died at the age 101 on Tuesday. 

The store tweeted “We love you, Lawrence,” while announcing the demise of Ferlinghetti. 

Ferlinghetti, who took part in the D-Day events of the second world war before settling down in San Francisco, was born on March 24, 1919.

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The bookstore swiftly became popular in the writing community and acted as a center point for the budding poets of the time. 

Ferlinghetti released his own volume “A Coney Island of the Mind” in 1958, the collection selling more than a million copies and establishing him as a major poet in his own right.

He was arrested on obscenity charges in 1957 for publishing Ginsberg’s “Howl,” considered an anthem of the disaffected Beat generation with its opening line, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.”

The poem, which refers to homosexuality and drugs, was criticized as explicit, but Ferlinghetti was acquitted in a highly publicized trial at which the judge ruled it was “not … without redeeming social importance.”

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City Lights said Ferlinghetti “continued to write and publish new work up until he was 100 years old, and his work has earned him a place in the American canon.”

In a statement released on the website of the bookstore, Ferlinghetti’s legacy was given a heartfelt tribute. The statement read, “Ferlinghetti continued to write and publish new work up until he was 100 years old, and his work has earned him a place in the American canon. His curiosity was unbounded and his enthusiasm was infectious, and we will miss him greatly,” the shop said in a statement on its website.”